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Who Cares?

Author:

Peter Kaukonen

Date:

Jun 16, 2007

Comments:

2

it's an interesting time we live in, but then .... i guess it always has been ..... still, there's a point out there somewhere that i'd like to make and, being as disorganized and circumlocuitous and fragmented as i am these days, bear with me: it may take me a while ......

"interesting," is it? ...... if i were still in a clinical setting, and a client told me that something was "interesting," my response would be that "interesting" told me absolutely nothing, and was there an elaboration waiting for me? it's interesting, the responses that my last "editorial" got, with people responding strongly to mention of my children .... what: everyone out there tired of me castigating bushies, of saying #$%#Q$^% and #Q$%Q#$% and Q#$%^#Q^%$$ and #Q$%Q#$%, a pgymy throwing pebbles at an elephant?

it's interesting, that i've been thinking of some of my clinical sessions, where emdr (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing; go google it .... unlike so much in psychology, this can really work) brought up instances of betrayal and violation of trust, by adults, on my clients when they were children .....

isn't that interesting? parents, or authority figures, or adults in positions of responsibility, who did not protect the child; who put the child at risk; who abused the child; who fucked the child; who let bad things happen to the child; who caused bad things to happen to the child .... yada yada yada yada ..... isn't that interesting? because we hear so much, and i mean so much, about how america values its children, especially if they're unborn ...... is it that they're easier to wax unctuous about when they're in utero?at least for men, who don't have to carry that additional weight; who don't have to go through hormonal changes; who don't have to endure the back aches and the headaches and the nausea, who don't have to greet each and every day by hunkering over the porcelain bowl, every morning ...... guys don't become quite so .... mmmm ..... dedicated once there's an organism that needs attention, that needs care, that needs milk, that needs to be cleaned, that needs to be burped, that needs to be changed, that won't sleep through the night ...... whatever it is, something happens to children to make them not quite as sparkling once they come popping out of the pussy and into this world, and it isn't the afterbirth overcoat, nor am i--as you may well imagine--a subscriber to the notion of original sin, so i don't believe that a newborn becomes an asshole and a sinner or a republican-devil-child once the umbilicus is cut and the butt smacked ......

isn't it interesting how such stances are at variance with practice? when i worked in a rural california county i dealt with a lot of child abuse, physical, mental, sexual, most of it perpetrated by men who had their dick in one hand, the bible in the other ......

you don't have to have a degree to figure out that such betrayals take their toll; you don't have to rub your chin and say, "tell me about ..... your muzzer!" to know that such violations have an enduring impact, that children may become adults who have difficult with intimacy; who are untrusting; who are guarded, isolated, disconnected, who may have post traumatic stress disorder .....

you know what's interesting?

i hate to generalize; i hate making sweeping statements like "a nation that _________________" is a nation that _____________ ......" but i have a point, and the point goes something like this:

we generally figure that our government is more cynical than it is benevolent, that it hasn't and doesn't always work for the benefit of its electorate, but ...... there have been times in american history, through some administrations, where programs were implemented that did have far reaching benefits ...... we like to cite the new deal, civil rights, and the brief period in american history when it actually was acceptable to belong to a labor union; god knows, workers in this country fought long enough and hard enough for the right to organize .......

by the same token, we know that newspapers have agendae of their own, that media has its own agenda, but ..... there have been periods of muckraking, of yellow journalism, of reportage that catalyzed awareness and ignited change and improvement; there were times when the media told "truth to power," when the media gave truth to the people ..... we balance william randolph hearst and the "spanish-american war" with the new york times and the pentagon papers, or the washington post and watergate ...... we remember people like upton sinclair and ida tarbell; what do we have today? katie fucking couric? robert novak?

you know, government, media ...... these are positions, these are functions of responsibility...... i won't say "authority," because i could give a shit about authority, although i'm all in favor of competence, but still ..... these are institutions that should be protecting and nurturing; should be educating and advancing the interests of; should ......

but you know, they don't ..... they don't at all ...... don't just dismiss me, out of hand, as someone who has such a rich fantasy life that he finds a pony every time he reads a headline; believe me, i don't ..... i'm at the point where i can't read the "news," nor can i listen to "national pentagon radio" any more ..... they've violated my trust as they've violated yours; they don't protect me and they don't protect you; the catechism of bush imperial incompetence, venality, and corruption, the litany of their cynicism is endless and blatant, neither is there any relief in the fifth estate ...... let's just run the litany, albeit briefly: failed to heed the warnings of an al quaeda attack; lied the country into a bogus and debilitating war; let osama get away; torture memo; abu ghraib; katrina; billions lost in iraq; jack abramoff and the k street project; jeff gannon, male prostitute as white house reporter; phone jamming, voter disenfranchisement, electoral theft; protect our troops: walter reed; warrantless wire-tapping of americans; pat tillman, jessica lynch; the air at ground zero; disclosing the identity of a cia agent; support our troops: no body armor, unarmored vehicles, no food; halliburton, no-bid contracts; firing federal prosecutors; and "smiley-face" cheney, of course, meeting with energy magnates before shooting his old friend in the face (thanks to lloyd dangle, "troubletown; the handly clip-out guide to the bush scandals) ........

to that fecal froth we can add judith miller and the new york times; ahmed chalabi and the inc; every ass-kissing, smirking, hystrionic, shrilling, snake-fucking "media personality" that rolled the drums for bush; that blew their pipes against gore; that thought "going to war" was the greatest, niftiest, neatest, peachy-keenest, coolest, spiffiest, bitchin'-est thing we could ever do and maybe they'd get higher ratings, better commercial rates, and a fucking raise .......

as if they weren't making enough money for sitting cheek by jowl with the whores in the white house, and parroting their birdshit ........

now, i'm in my sixties, my father was a career diplomat, and i grew up in asia .... i've stepped over plenty of bodies, seen them stacked up on the streets, seen them floating in manila bay; we knew way back when that the cia had assassinated ramon magsaysay, the president of the philippines, because he was just a little too ..... mmmmm ..... democratic? and we had to protect our military interests in clark field, sangley, subic bay, et al ...... so i think i have an understanding of realpolitik but ..... and this is a big fucking but .......

i've never seen anything like these fucking bushies, these fucking republicans .... nixon was a beaut, wasn't he? thieving, psychotoic, paranoid, delusional, alcoholic, but we had a media that gave the pretence that it was looking out for us .....

that didn't last, because we got into ronald "pull-my-fucking-strings-and-watch-my-jaw-flap-there'll-never-be-an-energy-crisis-because-you-can-always-wring-the-oil-out-of-my-fucking-hair" reagan, along with iran/contra and death squads, and then we got king george the first and the bcci scandal and death squads (oh .... you don't know about bcci? ha ha .... just kidding .... who does, these days?) and rumsfeldt and saddam and yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada ....

and no one says "boo ....."

here's what it's like: it's like a mother whoring out her child so she can buy drugs, then watching her five-year-old pull a train while she settles back and gets high (i've worked with families like this); it's like a father making his eight-year-old son blow him--after fucking him in the ass, then punching him in the face and saying, "don't tell your mother .... this is our little secret ....." it's like having child protective services (some day, when i write my memoirs, i'll tell you about child protective services, little wombat; now .... go to sleep) hold the child down, forcing the legs apart, while the police stuff old socks into the child's mouth so the screams won't disturb anyone (i have nothing but great things to say about the police and the sheriffs; they were always there when i called for 'em) ......

now, as we jerk ourselves off over our "candidates" for an election that'll be held two years from now, we have to contend with all the yammer about "bush and his legacy ...." fuck, what a concept: the bush legacy ..... stealing marbles? putting dogshit in a brown paper bag and setting fire to it? richie rich comics in the presidential library? killing a million people? talking about "the bush legacy" makes about as much sense as talking about "the richard speck legacy," or "the jeffrey dahmer legacy, " or "the ted bundy legacy ....."

i mean, in the grand scheme of things, they didn't kill a lot of people, but ..... they still get talked about ......

georgie-porgie's leaving us with more than a shattered china shop, which we probably'll be too fucking tired to even start cleaning up, and he's leaving us with more than 3,512 (more next week) dead military personnel and a million dead iraqis, along with two million refugues, 72 of whom we've allowed into the land of the free and the home ... ha ha ....excuse me .... of the brave .....

what we're left with is the sense of disconnect, disillusionment, and depression; the sense of hopelessness and helplessness; the sense of powerlessness, of disbelief, of utter futility .... because those who should care .....

2 Comments

Hope you don't mind if I quote you. The only other writer that is as eloquent, i.m.o. is John Le Carre. This from his (supposedly fictional)2003 book "Absolute Friends":

"That war on Iraq was illegitimate, Mr. Mundy. It was a criminal and immoral conspiracy. No provocation, no link with Al Qaeda, no weapons of Armageddon. Tales of complicity between Saddam and Osama were self-serving bullshit. It was an old colonial war dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty, and it was launched by a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post 9-11 psychopathy. All it takes for a war like that to start, Sasha tells me, is for a few good men to do nothing. Well, they DID nothing. Whether they're good men, that's another thing. The Democratic opposition did fuck-all. Stay home, sing patriotic songs till it's safe to come out was their policy. Jesus Christ, what kind of opposition is that? What kind of moral courage?"